Muslims’ political representation is poor despite their key role in elections

Nellore: Though Muslim Minorities play a key role in deciding the fate of candidates contesting in the Assembly elections, they had rarely contested any elections since 1952 in this district.

There is a total of 17,16,174 voters in the constituency, of them, 2,02,96 are Muslim voters. Their political representation is very poor for various reasons like low literacy rate, poor financial conditions.

In 1955 elections, one Shaik Moula Saheb contested on Congress ticket and got elected against his CPI political rival Kotapati Guruswamy Reddy with a bare majority of 576 votes.

The highest-level Muslim community people had reached in politics so far is that of Mayor. This includes Shaik Abdil Aziz (TDP) and SK Sandani Basha and Mahamood Hyder (Congress) as Deputy Mayor. Mahamood Khaleel Ahmed from YSRCP is the present party nominee for Nellore city Assembly segment. This is the one district where Reddy and Kammas domination is the highest.

Former Vice-President Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu got elected on Janata Party ticket in 1978 and on BJP ticket in 1983 elections from Udayagiri constituency, where the voting share of Muslims recorded 7.8 per cent in those days.